Iran to launch museum in Persepolis ancient site

TEHRAN .(Iranart) - The newly discovered gateway to the city of Parseh in the Persepolis, located in Iran's Fars Province near Shiraz, will be turned into a museum, the Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism (RICHT) said.

The site will soon be turned into a museum, allowing all tourists to come and visit the historical site, the institute quoted Head of the Archeological Exploration Team Alireza Askari as saying,

According to Askari, Iran Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization intends to promote tourism in the area by launching such a museum site, IRNA reported.

“The city of Parseh in Persepolis is an expanded area of the debris of the ancient monuments around the Persepolis, which was a city in the Achaemenid era,” he said.

The city is composed of several sections, the main part of which was the Imperial Citadel with the same modern royal seat of the Persepolis, Askari added.

According to the archeologist, the gateway is a unique venue with the same size of the gateway of Babylon during the rule of Cyrus.

The unique and common style of the two gateways of the Parseh and Babylon in the Achaemenid era is indicative of the cultural link between Parseh and Babylon, the head of the archeological exploration team said.

Babylon, the most important city of ancient Mesopotamia, is located in south of modern Iraq and during three millennia, especially during the Achaemenid era, it was the most important religious city in Mesopotamia, Askari added.

The chronology of the new gateway of the old section and the initial texture of the city of Parseh in the Persepolis indicate that the gateway was built as a reminder of the conquest of Babylon by the Cyrus of the Achaemenid in Parseh, he said.